


My Soul to Keep

by Pythonmelon



Category: Buzz Lightyear of Star Command
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 02:03:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5479193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pythonmelon/pseuds/Pythonmelon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darkness falls on the ship, and a darkness long thought dead still lurks. XR was never one to resist temptation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Soul to Keep

“What does a guy have to do to get some respect around here!” XR kicked at the floor furiously. Booster and Mira had just earned new medals of honor, one which Buzz (of course) already had. This was the third time he had been left out of an award simply because he was left in the ship.   
This medal was the Cosmic Pulsar award, for honorable acts in extreme situations. They had rescued an entire endangered culture from a tiny planet by a collapsing sun. He had been charging from a mission earlier that day, when he had been run down badly.   
He sighed. XR’s batteries weren’t what they used to be. They hadn’t been in years, and wouldn’t be until they were changed by the LGMs. But due to Nebula saving money, XR’s batteries didn’t get changed until he had to charge more than twice a day, not counting his nightly charge. He was already at once a day, usually right around noon.   
Normally he wouldn’t brood on this stuff. XR was a good bot, and an important member of the team. He had always been. The robot wasn’t going to complain in front of his friends. But it still… hurt.   
The bot climbed onto his charger for the night. The ceremony had run long, and everyone was already off to bed. “What I wouldn’t do to get what I deserve…” He sighed, then drifted off.   
Only a little later, not past one at least, when a sharp squeal of metal claws across his helmet woke the bot. He woke, tired and surprised at first, looking around. There were three scorched clawmarks on his helmet. XR became afraid. He swallowed. “Wh-who’s there?”   
“Depends on who’s asking.” A British-mechanical accented voice purred. The small bot’s eyes widened. He knew that voice. Oh God he KNEW that voice. But he had died almost twenty years ago…   
XR was startled out of his thoughts as something terrible and monstrous crawled over the top of his charger and suspended itself in front of XR, floating mildly. There was something new and terrifying about him. A flaming red aura, warm even from a few feet away, was around him. Nos-4-a2. AKA XR’s worst nightmare. “Wh-what are you doing here? I thought you were dead!” He tried to squabble back.   
“Oh, shhh shhh…” Nos cooed playfully. “I am dead. They had a special place in hell for me when I arrived.” He motioned to himself. Whole, powerful. A demon.   
“Wh-what do you want??” He demanded. XR had no time to think about the fact that his dark master had returned from the dead after twenty years. He was too surprised, too terrified.   
“I’ve simply come to offer you what you wish for.” He smiled. “Publicity, fame, riches. All you previously mentioned desiring?” He smirked.   
“Yeah… but there’s got to be a catch!” The other bot snapped.   
“All that I ask is one tiny thing little one, and all that will be yours.” Nos cocked his head, smirking quite sincerely. “All we want is your soul.”   
“Wait- my soul? Do robots even have souls?” XR frowned.   
“Some do, in fact now most do.” The vampire shrugged. “You do.”   
“…Did you?” Why was he curious? Even he didn’t know. XR was still in shock.   
“I suppose I had a form of a soul. That’s why I didn’t just stop existing. I had for too long. I was too close to human to be destroyed by the simple destruction of my memory card.” He began picking at his claws, boredly. His ocular lenses were fully contracted, showing he didn’t expect XR to run or anything. “But it wasn’t exactly a soul. The one time I offered to sell it, I didn’t have the sufficient funds for what I wished for.”   
XR was surprised at this. A semi-soul…. Is that all he had? Did XR have any more than that? “But…”   
“Oh, don’t you want it XR?” He offered a hand. “No harm will come to you. And think… you will exist for hundreds of years. It will be such a long time until you have to pay…” He smiled, cocking his head in that animalistic way he had again. “And during that time you get to live with the riches you’ve earned.   
“I…I…” The robot looked distressed. This was so sudden. So horrifying. And yet so appeasing… “I will.” He reached his hand into the darkness. Nos’s snatched his. Suddenly he felt a horrid burning sensation snake up his arm. XR’s nerve servers felt like they were being fried. It took all he had not to scream.   
Suddenly he was let go, hurled roughly to the ground. Nos’s friendly demeanor was gone. He smirked quite evilly. “Yes, there we go… the contract is almost complete.” XR was still recovering. He groaned, rubbing his already burnt helmet. Nos watched for a moment before opening a compartment on his chest.   
XR flinched. The light came flooding out of that compartment. It wasn’t pleasant light, it was hot. Fire and sparks spewed from the compartment, light directly from hell. He swallowed. Nos reached casually, almost elbow deep, into the compartment and pulled out an ancient paper. It was a contract.   
“All I need is for you to sign this now.” The energy vampire unraveled the scroll, showing it to XR.   
“I….uh… I don’t believe I have a pen with me…” XR laughed nervously, terrified.   
Nos tsked. “Oh no, no pens required. And no stalling XR, time is fame.” He teased. XR looked confused. How was he to sign? And then his arm, the one that had been shocked, raised. He noticed that the fingertips were leaking servo fluid.   
He tried to resist, but couldn’t. The appendage moved without his control. His fingertips touched the paper very lightly. Only then could he jerk back. XR breathed a sigh of relief, believing he had escaped this nightmare somehow. But he was still in the firelight. Nos watched him unpleasantly as the inkblots spread, forming the letters of his name.   
XR  
“Thank you little one, it’s been a pleasure doing business with you.” The vampire tucked the scroll back away, and XR watched, mesmerized, as his soul disappeared in smoke.   
Another paper appeared in Nos’s hand. This time is was an envelope, addressed to the Commander. “Wh-wh-wh-what’s that?” He stuttered finally.   
“This, my little can of snack chips, is the letter to Nebula that will give you all you ever wanted.” He smirked. “Just take this with you and leave it on his desk.”   
XR frowned. But it was too late. The envelope was thrust into his hands by Nos. “Good job little one. I will be seeing you in hell.”   
“Wait!-“ XR struggled to his feet, throwing himself foreward, but the door was shut. The fires were gone. He was alone. The fried nerves, the scratches on his helmet. It was all gone. He looked around. “It was… a dream?” He sighed. The robot stood, dusting himself off. He pushed back a yawn.   
It wasn’t until the little bot went to climb back into his charger that he realized, in horror, that he had the letter clenched in his fist. XR swallowed. He read the address, thoughtfully. It was labeled to the Commander, as he had seen before, and from the president.   
XR contemplated just throwing away the letter and going to bed. What could Nos do to him after all? Nightmares… that was it. But he had to. He had to, or go to hell now instead of putting off for potentially hundreds of years. And without his riches and fame.   
XR decided not to wonder what it said, and instead quietly went over to where desky was charging, undisturbed by the ruckus, and laid it by the fax machine to look as if it had arrived in the night. He then ran back to his charger, climbed in, and spent a restless night afraid of the dark.  
~~~  
The next morning Commander Nebula came into his office to find the letter on his desk, placed neatly and printed in the night. But it was from the president, which was unusual. He frowned before sitting down and tearing it open with his fingers. There was no return envelope or fax address, which was unusual. That meant whatever was in this letter was a final decision.   
The commander sighed as he began to read. It was a very official letter. A very cryptic one. As he finished reading the man, now quite old, looked up. His eyes were wide, and he frowned deeply. This was terrible. Still angered, he fumbled for the intercom button, hit it, and took a few deep breaths. “Attention rangers. Please report to the meeting hall. Everyone. That is not a request.” 

~~~  
Once the congregation of rangers, including ones that had been pulled from the field, were in the meeting hall, commander Nebula mounted the stage with more vigor than he normally did. He peg leg dragged, as if it bothered him. This set off an alarm to the rangers, especially team Lightyear. XR was sitting there, looking terribly worried. He rubbed his thumbs together hard, as he did Nebula coughed, to quiet everyone.   
He jolted, and looked up as his father began to sleep. “Ahem…” He rubbed his moustache to concentrate. There was a shifting silence. “I have an announcement.” He looked around again, as if unwilling to begin. But finally he did. “The president of the galactic alliance has decided that, due to budget cuts, our shields need to be taken down and replaced with cheaper ones.” There was a surprised noise from the crowd. This wasn’t so bad, why did he seem so annoyed? “They are too expensive to maintain and must be taken down immediately, the problem is, though,” He tightened his grip on the podium. “The new shields won’t be ready, installed ad operational, for three weeks. Until then we will need a very strong security detail.”   
So that’s why he was so upset? Well, it was bad… XR sighed, wondering what exactly Nos had been up to. He continued to listen carefully.   
“That is all. We begin work tomorrow.” The commander stomped off stage.   
‘That’s it?’ XR frowned. ‘That’s all it is? So I do get what I wanted?’ He sighed deeply, relieved.   
~~~  
Oh how wrong he had been. It had turned out that the letter was indeed real. He assumed Nos had intercepted it. So he hadn’t been behind it, but had used it to play XR into his hands…  
They had had to shut down everything but the gravity system, which was on its own frame, for the removal of the shields. They were removed one section at a time, slowly making a wider hole in their defenses. Everyone was on guard duty.  
Nothing happened for several days. Zurg was up to his usual tricks, and appeared to have no idea the shields were down. Neither did anyone else. That made it even more shocking when it happened.   
XR and XL were the only survivors. But it made sense, not being technically ‘alive’ made them exempt from a death ray, even with the extra 20% more death. No one ever saw it coming.   
So there was the fame. The last surviving space ranger, and his fax machine brother of course. And then there was the fortune. As it turned out, Commander Nebula had no other descendants. Only a wife, who had passed away before either of them were ever built. When the will was looked at, almost everything went to Buzz and a handful of nephews, with the exception of the nest egg he had never accessed. It had been specified that this wad of money, one hundred unibucks (but usually more) every week since he began working for star command, be given to any listed successors. That had meant XR and XL, split evenly. They both had almost half a million dollars. While it wasn’t an extremely large fortune, it was more money than most people had. He had a news interview tomorrow, and to speak at all the funerals. All six hundred. So here was his publicity.   
XR supposed he couldn’t be mad. He hadn’t been tricked by Nos or anything. He had received exactly what he wanted. No complaints there. But he supposed he should have been a bit more specific… he had never been good at being specific. Buzz had always told him to be more specific.   
The bot sat up in his charger, and went to the deck to sit. He was surprised to see XL out there already. “It’s weird, being alone again.” His big brother muttered.   
“Oh, we’re not alone.” XR offered. “We’ve got each other…” He looked away. “And our demons.”   
“Demons?”   
“Yeah, demons. Like-“ He coughed. “little things that still bother us.”  
“So, like the space rangers being gone?” The bot frowned.   
“Yeah, and other stuff.” The ever-so-slightly taller bot rubbed the back of is helmet.   
“Like?”   
He managed a smiled, then patted his brother’s shoulder. XR looked at XL, then at the stars where the space station once hung. “Brother, all you need to know it that I’ve got demons you wouldn’t believe.”


End file.
